Alchemist enables a software development team in realization of highly secure and defensible application with built-in defenses/controls against security‐related design, coding and implementation flaws.

Alchemist is focused to present this solution by architecting a real-life high stakes application with security built into it right from the inception, step-by-step as it falls under an SDLC. The current exercise is targeted at demonstrating this on a J2EE based web application that is developed using Spring framework. Spring framework was chosen due to its widespread adoption in the financial products. However, it is important note that Alchemist is not limited to J2EE or more specifically Spring framework. The idea is to demonstrate the upper spectrum of security practices that are often neglected or are done in bits and pieces by picking a well known widely adopted technology. Since the emphasis is on security architecture and defensibility, the future road-map is to demonstrate the same for applications built using other leading programming languages and frameworks.

Although this project is more than useful for existing/already developed applications, Alchemist is not the ideal solution to retrofit security into existing applications. It is aimed at offering more to applications that are at least in development, most in design phase. Allowing for language-specific differences, Alchemist builds this application with a strong foundation of security architecture that covers following main practices:

*The Project’s primary objective is to establish common, consistent methods for application security assessments standards that organizations can use as guidance on what tasks should be completed, how the tasks should be completed and what level of assessment is appropriate based on business requirement.

The final goal is to integrate a set of OWASP projects into an Application Security Assessment process in order to define a model which can be used by an organization to provide application security through OWASP standards.

In 9 years of activities OWASP has become the standard for Web Application Security. We are full of projects that are fantastic resources for developers and testers.

OWASP SAMM and ASVS address many security management issues.

What I see is missing now is a kind of guideline the managers should follow to adhere to the OWASP standards. I see that every security manager has different idea about the secure dev and testing (when and how to perform it).

This project wants to address the Security Manager point of view and tell him what he should do to implement an efficient Application Security Program.

In this project we will show all the OWASP Guides and tools and will tell why,how and when to use that. We can do that in function of the size of the organization, management roles and objectives. The idea is for example for a Bank Company,OWASP says to perform a OWASP SAMM assessment every year, to per perform Code Review and WAPT to all critical new software, testing every 3 months, etc.. Every activities is linked to an OWASP resource to use.

The OWASP Application Security Skills Assessment (OWASP ASSA) is an online multiple-choice quiz built to help individuals understand their strengths and weaknesses in specific application security skills with the aim of enabling them to focus their training in the most efficient and appropriate manner.

Upon completion of the quiz, for each question, it will tell the quiz taker whether they had the correct or incorrect answer, a discussion of the question, the specific application security areas the question focused on, a discussion about the correct an incorrect answers, and links to further references.

The primary aim of the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) Project is to normalize the range in the coverage and level of rigour available in the market when it comes to performing Web application security verification using a commercially-workable open standard. The standard provides a basis for testing application technical security controls, as well as any technical security controls in the environment, that are relied on to protect against vulnerabilities such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and SQL injection. This standard can be used to establish a level of confidence in the security of Web applications. The requirements were developed with the following objectives in mind:

Use as a metric - Provide application developers and application owners with a yardstick with which to assess the degree of trust that can be placed in their Web applications,

Use as guidance - Provide guidance to security control developers as to what to build into security controls in order to satisfy application security requirements, and

Use during procurement - Provide a basis for specifying application security verification requirements in contracts.

Overview
The AppSensor project defines a conceptual framework and methodology that offers prescriptive guidance to implement intrusion detection and automated response into an existing application. Current efforts are underway to create the AppSensor tool which can be utilized by any existing application interested in adding detection and response capabilities.
Detection
AppSensor defines over 50 different detection points which can be used to identify a malicious attacker.
Response
AppSensor provides guidance on how to respond once a malicious attacker has been identified. Possible actions include: logging out the user, locking the account or notifying an administrator. More than a dozen response actions are described.
Defending the Application
An attacker often requires numerous probes and attack attempts in order to locate an exploitable vulnerability within the application. By using AppSensor it is possible to identify and eliminate the threat of an attacker before they are able to successfully identify an exploitable flaw.

OWASP ASIDE/ESIDE

OWASP ASIDE/ESIDE project consist of two branches, the ASIDE branch that focuses on detecting software vulnerabilities and helping developer write secure code, and the ESIDE branch that focuses on help educating students secure programming knowledge and practices. Details about ESIDE are described [here].

Introduction

ASIDE is an abbreviation for Application Security plugin for Integrated Development Environment. It is an Eclipse Plugin which is a software tool primarily designed to help developers write more secure code by detecting and identifying potentially vulnerable code and providing informative fixes during the construction of programs in IDEs.

Description

ASIDE CodeRefactoring for Education is an Eclipse plugin that aims to detect root cause of vulnerabilities that are caused by untrusted inputs get in to the application and be consumed without validation, and provide interactive code refactoring support for students and professional developers to learn secure programming practices and write more secure code.

ASIDE CodeAnnotate is another Eclipse plugin which deals with a different class of vulnerabilities that are more application logic specific. Specifically, it is aimed at addressing CSRF and broken access control issues while the developers are writing their code.

An older version of ASIDE DEMO shows you earlier design and implementation of CodeRefactoring, if you are interested in knowing. You will need Adobe Flash to display it.

Licensing

OWASP ASIDE is free to use. It is licensed under the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license], so you can copy, distribute and transmit the work, and you can adapt it, and use it commercially, but all provided that you attribute the work and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

What is ASIDE/ESIDE?

OWASP ASIDE provides:

Interactive Static Analysis support to developers in Eclipse IDE (for Java and PHP) to detect and mitigate software vulnerabilities in the code

Interactive Secure Programming Education opportunities in IDE for students as well as professional developers to help them write more secure code as well as learn best secure programming practices

Project Leaders

Related Projects

Openhub

Quick Download

Runnable plugins and installation guidelines

The recent publicly available ASIDE CodeRefactoring plugin can be downloaded from here. You also need to download the complementary logging facility to make ASIDE work properly. ASIDE CodeRefactoring is built upon Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers Version 3.5+. To make it work, please place the two jar files under the plugins folder of your Eclipse installation directory and then restart your Eclipse.

The recent publicly available ASIDE CodeAnnotate plugin can be downloaded from here. ASIDE CodeAnnotate is built upon Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers Version 3.5+. To make it work, please place the jar files under the plugins folder of your Eclipse installation directory and then restart your Eclipse. Demo of how to run CodeAnnotate can be viewed from here.

New! We recently released a version of ASIDE CodeAnnotate plugin for Eclipse PHP Development Environment. It is built upon Eclipse PDT framework, you can download the plugin here. As it is still in incubator phase at this point, we recommend you to first install the configured Eclipse PHP package we provide on Linux, which can be downloaded here, and then place the jar file under the plugins folder of the Eclipse installation directory, and then restart your Eclipse. Demo of how to run CodeAnnotate can be viewed from here. A good PHP open source project you can try the plugin against is Moodle;

In Print

N/A

Classifications

ASIDE project has been continuously under active research, development, and evaluation.
Involvement in the development and promotion of ASIDE is actively encouraged!
You do not have to be a security expert in order to contribute.
Some of the ways you can help:

Try ASIDE and email your feedback, comments to the project leaders.

Do pilot study with ASIDE in your team, and the project leaders would love to collaborate!

ESIDE

Introduction

ESIDE (Educational Security in the IDE) enhances the secure coding instructional process by turning
the student's IDE into a real-time secure programming instructional resource. This approach capitalizes
on the out of class, in the IDE time by providing layered educational opportunities whenever the
student writes specific code patterns (i.e., vulnerable code) in a fashion similar to Microsoft's Grammar
Checker. In this manner, ESIDE provides students with the opportunity to learn secure coding
principles and practices concurrently with the lessons they are learning in their respective courses.

Description

Deployed as an Eclipse IDE Java plugin, ESIDE continuously searches for predetermined code patterns
(e.g., request.getParameter();). Whenever a student writes targeted code, they are provided with an
interactive system that provides a layered educational opportunity. Because students are contextually
“in the moment” when the support becomes available, they are more receptive to making the
connection between classroom principles and coding practices. A secondary effect is the exponential
increase in instructional exposure which has been proven to be successful in other instructional areas.
The overall goal of ESIDE is to serve as an effective means to educate students at every level on the
principles and practices of secure coding throughout their educational experience. To this end, we have
developed ESIDE's interactive process as follows: The moment target code is written, ESIDE initiates
a layered educational intervention based on the targeted code. The first layer is a warning icon that
is placed in the left margin of the code editor. Hovering the icon reveals a short message that
encourages further interaction. When the student clicks the icon, ESIDE generates a
content specific list of educational options. Each of these options are accompanied with a short
explanation of the issue at hand. For each generated list, there also exists the option to
access an explanation page that provides a more comprehensive explanation of what was
discovered, why it is important, and how to integrate the provided principles into coding practices.

Runnable ESIDE Prototype and Installation Guidelines

The recent publicly available ESIDE plugin can be downloaded from here. You also need to download the complementary logging facility to make ESIDE work properly. ESIDE is built upon Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers Version 3.5+. To make it work, please place the two jar files under the plugins folder of your Eclipse installation directory and then restart your Eclipse.

Open Source Code

Priorities and get involved

As of March 17, 2015 the priorities are:

1. Move xml into a database.

2. Create a public repository of customized ESIDE support for specific courses.

Involvement in the development and promotion of ESIDE is actively encouraged! You do not have to
be a security expert in order to contribute. Some of the ways you can help: Individuals who are interested in content contribution, usability evaluation or deploying ESIDE in their classroom would be wonderful!!

Web applications of all kinds, whether online shops or partner portals, have in recent years increasingly become the target of hacker attacks. The attackers are using methods which are specifically aimed at exploiting potential weak spots in the web application software itself - and this is why they are not detected, or are not detected with sufficient accuracy, by traditional IT security systems such as network firewalls or IDS/IPS systems.

This project was created to provide a concise collection of high value information on specific application security topics. These cheat sheets were created by multiple application security experts and provide excellent security guidance in an easy to read format.

Goal of the project is to maintain a list of top 10 security risks faced with the Cloud Computing and SaaS Models. List will be maintained by input from community, security experts and security incidences at cloud/SaaS providers.

To create and maintain OWASP Codes of Conduct. In order to achieve our mission, OWASP needs to take advantage of every opportunity to affect software development everywhere. At the OWASP Summit 2011 in Portugal, the idea was created to try to influence educational institutions, government bodies, standards groups, and trade organizations. We set out to define a set of minimal requirements for these organizations specifying what we believe to be the most effective ways to support our mission. We call these requirements a “code of conduct” to imply that these are normative standards, they represent a minimum baseline, and that they are not difficult to achieve.

The code review guide is currently at release version 1.1 and the second best selling OWASP book in 2008. Many positive comments have been feedback regarding this initial version and believe it’s a key enabler for the OWASP fight against software insecurity. It has even inspired individuals to build tools based on its information. The combination of a book on secure code review and tools to support such an activity is very powerful as it gives the developer community a place to start regarding secure application development.

Going forward I hope to further integrate with the ASVS and other guides such as the testing and ASDR guides shall be perfromed for version 2.0.

An exciting development, a new numbering scheme that will be common across OWASP Guides and References is being developed. The numbering is loosely based on the OWASP ASVS section and detailed requirement numbering. OWASP ASVS, Guide, and Reference project leads and contributors as well as the OWASP leadership plan to work together to develop numbering that would allow for easy mapping between OWASP Guides and References, and that would allow for a period of transition as Guides and References are updated to reflect the new numbering. This project will provide a centralized clearinghouse for mapping information.

The purpose of this Project is to create a competitive environment which can be used at conferences and to have fun and teach in a playful way the various mistakes which are made in regards to web applications.

The Development Guide provides practical guidance and includes J2EE, ASP.NET, and PHP code samples. The Development Guide covers an extensive array of application-level security issues, from SQL injection through modern concerns such as phishing, credit card handling, session fixation, cross-site request forgeries, compliance, and privacy issues.

Enterprise applications security is one of the major topics in overall security area because those applications controls money and resources and every security violation can result a significant money loss. Purpose of this project is to aware people about enterprise application security problems and create a guideline for EA security assessment.

The Owasp Esapi Ruby is a port for outstanding release quality Owasp Esapi project to the Ruby programming language. The idea is to build a Ruby gem (the standard ruby library archive format) containing the Esapi concepts implemented in Ruby classes so people using Ruby in their Rails application can have security into them.

*This a web application which demonstrates common security vulnerabilities and asks users to secure the application against these vulnerabilities using the ESAPI library.

The application is intended for Java Developers. The goal of the application is to teach developers about the functionality of the ESAPI library and give users a practical understanding of how it can be used to protect web applications against common security vulnerabilities.

The OWASP Exams project will establish the model by which the OWASP community can create and distribute CC-licensed exams for use by educators. The purpose of the exams is to improve the effectiveness of OWASP training through the use of exams as a means of measurement and student progress tracking. The project will include creation of a set of CC-licensed exams, a model for exam usage, and a roadmap for future exam creation.

The exams may be distributed either in text format as well as in Moodle (an open source LMS) format so that they can be re-purposed for use in any system or an educator can use them directly in Moodle to administer exams to students. Ideally the exams will be tied to OWASP Academies learning blocks so that there is good learning and training content that can be used to motivate the usage of the exams.

This projects aims to develop a tool to exploit Top 10 2010 - A10 - Unvalidated Forward vulnerability to bypass access control to protected Java application files (config, binary -source code, etc.). It aims also to automate the download of known files in Java Web applications.

GoatDroid

The OWASP GoatDroid Project is a fully functional and self-contained environment for learning about Android security.

Introduction

GoatDroid requires minimal dependencies, and is ideal for both Android beginners as well as more advanced users. The project currently includes two applications: FourGoats, a location based social network, and Herd Financial, a mobile banking application.

Description

OWASP GoatDroid is a fully functional and self-contained training environment for educating developers and testers on Android security. GoatDroid requires minimal dependencies and is ideal for both Android beginners as well as more advanced users. The project currently includes two applications: FourGoats, a location-based social network, and Herd Financial, a mobile banking application. There are also several feature that greatly simplify usage within a training environment or for absolute beginners who want a good introduction to working with the Android platform.

As the Android SDK introduces new features, the GoatDroid contributors will strive to implement up-to-date lessons that can educate developers and security testers on new security issues. The project currently provides coverage for most of the OWASP Top 10 Mobile Risks and also includes a bunch of other problems as well.

Contributions will always be needed in order to keep this project moving at a pace that can support the seemingly endless new problems to tackle. If you are interested, please contact the project's leaders or send an email to the OWASP Mobile Security Project mailing list. We welcome code contributors, beta testers, new feature suggestions, and feedback always!

Licensing

GoatDroid is published by OWASP under the GPLv3 license. You should read and accept the LICENSE before you use, modify, and/or redistribute this software.

*The Hackademic Challenges is an open source project that can be used to test and improve one's knowledge of web application security.

The Hackademic Challenges project implements realistic scenarios with known vulnerabilities in a safe, controllable environment. Users can attempt to discover and exploit these vulnerabilities in order to learn important concepts of information security through the attacker's perspective.

They have been especially designed for use in a classroom environment where they have been proved a valuable educational tool. Using hackademic challenges students have the chance to experience application security in a realistic environment, something that triggers their interest and provokes a lot of interesting discussions.

The Hackademic Challenges are currently used in several Universities and have received very positive feedback from both professors and students.

*The Datafiddler is a tool for performing advanced analysis of http traffic. It currently consists of two main views, one table-based and one tree-based. These views allow the user to study different aspects of the http traffic, with very high degree of configurability. The tool is also meant to be a framework which can utilize existing tools to analyze traffic post mortem (or real-time).

*The Hatkit Proxy is an intercepting http/tcp proxy based on the Owasp Proxy, but with several additions. These additions are:

Swing-based UI,

Interception capabilities with manual edit,

Syntax highlightning (html/form-data/http) based on JFlex,

Storage of http traffic into MongoDB database,

Interception capabilities of tcp-traffic,

Possibilities to intercept in Fully Qualified mode (like all other http-proxies) OR Non-fully qualified mode. The latter means that interception is performed *after* the host has been parsed, thereby enabling the user to submit non-valid http content.

The primary purpose of the Hatkit Proxy is to create a minimal, lightweight proxy which stores traffic into an offline storage where further analysis can be performed, e.g. all kinds of analysis which is currently implemented by the proxies themselves (webscarab/burp/paros etc).

Also, since the http traffic is stored in a MongoDB, the traffic is stored at an object-level, retaining the structure of the parsed traffic, which enables a user to perform advanced queries later.

The proxy should also be a good choice for 'defenders' who wants to (temporarily?) monitor traffic. The proxy itself is, as stated, very lightweight, and the backend MongoDB storage scales very well and should be able to handle extreme amounts of data. This would allow defenders to perform advanced post-mortem or real-time analysis of incoming traffic.

The iGoat project aims to be a developer learning environment for iOS app developers. It was inspired by the OWASP WebGoat project in particular the developer edition of WebGoat.

Similar to WebGoat (developer), the user is presented with a series of lessons surrounding numerous vulnerabilities associated with iOS apps. The student exploits each vulnerability to validate its existence, and then he implements a remediation in the lesson's source code.

Further, iGoat is designed and implemented modularly, similar conceptually to WebGoat's modular Java EE servlet model. It is intended to provide a foundational framework to build lessons on top of, starting with a core set of lessons provided in the first release.

To produce a simplified version of Javascript by using regular expressions to remove dangerous functionality and then use Javascript itself to evaluate the results. The goal is to allow normal web users to safely code javascript on a site without exposing sensitive information. This project has three 'sub'-projects: OWSP JSReg + OWASP HTMLReg + OWASP CSSReg.

Main

OWASP Java Encoder Project

The OWASP Java Encoder is a Java 1.5+ simple-to-use drop-in high-performance encoder class with no dependencies and little baggage. This project will help Java web developers defend against Cross Site Scripting!

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks are a type of injection, in which malicious scripts (primarily JavaScript) are injected into otherwise trusted web sites. You can read more about Cross Site Scripting here: Cross-site_Scripting_(XSS). One of the primary defenses to stop Cross Site Scripting is a technique called Contextual Output Encoding. You can read more about Cross Site Scripting prevention here: XSS_(Cross_Site_Scripting)_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet.

Introduction

Contextual Output Encoding is a computer programming technique necessary to stop Cross Site Scripting. This project is a Java 1.5+ simple-to-use drop-in high-performance encoder class with no dependencies and little baggage. It provides numerous encoding functions to help defend against XSS in a variety of different HTML, JavaScript, XML and CSS contexts.

Quick Overview

The OWASP Java Encoder library is intended for quick contextual encoding with very little overhead, either in performance or usage. To get started, simply add the encoder-1.2.jar, import org.owasp.encoder.Encode and start encoding.

Please look at the javadoc for Encode to see the variety of contexts for which you can encode. Tag libraries and JSP EL functions can be found in the encoder-jsp-1.2.jar.

If you want to try it out or see it in action, head over to "Can You XSS This? (.com)" and hit it with your best XSS attack vectors!

In Print

Classifications

Use the Java Encoder Project

The general API pattern is to utilize the Java Encoder Project in your user interface code and wrap all variables added dynamically to HTML with a proper encoding function. The encoding pattern is "Encode.forContextName(untrustedData)", where "ContextName" is the name of the target context and "untrustedData" is untrusted output.

Basic HTML Context

<body><%= Encode.forHtml(UNTRUSTED) %></body>

HTML Content Context

HTML Attribute context

Generally Encode.forHtml(UNTRUSTED) is also safe but slightly less efficient for the above two contexts (for textarea content and input value text) since it encodes more characters than necessary but might be easier for developers to use.

JSP Tag Library

Maven

Grave Accent Issue

The following describes the Grave Accent XSS issue with unpatched versions of Internet Explorer. Thank you to Rafay Baloch for bringing this to our attention and to Jeff Ichnowski for the workaround.

Introduction

The grave accent (`), ASCII 96, hex 60 (wikipedia) is subject to a critical flaw in unpatched Internet Explorer. There is no possible encoding of the character that can avoid the issue. For a more in depth presentation on the issue discussed herein, please see Mario Heidrech's presentation.

Background

In Internet Explorer, the grave accent is usable as an HTML attribute quotation character, equivalent to single and double quotes. Specifically, IE treats the following as equivalent:

<body><%= Encode.forHtml(textValue) %>" /></body>

<input value="this is the value">
<input value=`this is the value`>

It is an IE extension, is not in HTML specifications (HTML4, HTML5), and is probably not well supported in other browsers.

When this snippet is run in Internet Explorer the following steps happen:

Two div elements are created with id's "a" and "b"

The script executes "a.innerHTML" which returns:

<input value=``onmouseover=alert(1)>

The script sets "b.innerHTML" to the value from (2) and is converted to the DOM equivalent of

<input value="" onmouseover="alert(1)">

The XSS issue arises from IE returning a value from innerHTML that it does not parse back into the original DOM. Patched version of IE fix this issue by returning the XSS value as a double-quoted attribute. The issue is complicated by the fact that no possible encoding of the grave accent can avoid this issue.

When...

<input value="``onmouseover=alert(1)">

...is the input, "a.innerHTML" returns the same XSS vector as it does without the encoding.

Recommend Solution

Our recommended workaround is to update any JavaScript based innerHTML read to replace the accent grave with a numeric entity encoded form: "`". As an example, the following change to the XSS vulnerable code above fixes the issue:

<script>a.innerHTML=b.innerHTML.replace(/`/g, "`");</script>

This can be done in any library code that reads the innerHTML. To follow how this addresses the issue, the innerHTML from step 2 of the issue is converted to:

<input value=&#96;&#96;onmouseover=alert(1)>

Since the browser will no longer see the grave accents as an empty attribute, it will convert the input back to a copy of its original DOM.

Other Possible Solutions

As there is no encoding option available, the following options are available to web application authors:

Do not use innerHTML copies

Filter out the accent grave from any user input

Clean up grave accents when using an innerHTML copy

OWASP Java Encoder Library Related Changes

The OWASP Java Encoder Library at its core is intended to be a XSS safe _encoding_ library. The grave accent is a legitimate and frequently used character, that cannot be encoded to avoid this bug in unpatched versions of IE. With enough user feedback, we may update the library to include one of the following options: (1) alternate, drop-in build that filters grave accents, with unchanged API, (2) new filtering methods.

JXT is a fast and secure XHTML-compliant template language that runs on a model similar to JSP. JXT provides automatic context-aware encoding of data to make it easy to avoid OWASP Top Ten Project #2 web-application security risks Cross-site Scripting.

By providing automatic context aware escaping, JXT relieves the developer of having to think through the various contexts and appropriate escaping method required--allowing them to focus on coding the application. It also helps make the application more robust--it is easy to forget an escape after late night coding sessions after long hours. An additional benefit, perhaps not obvious at first, is that the automatic escaping provides for shorter syntax, and thus more readable code.

JBroFuzz is a stateless web application fuzzer for requests being made over HTTP and/or HTTPS. Its purpose is to provide a single, portable application that offers stable web protocol fuzzing capabilities. As a tool, it emerged from the needs of penetration testing.

Purpose: LAPSE stands for a Lightweight Analysis for Program Security in Eclipse. LAPSE is designed to help with the task of auditing Java EE Applications for common types of security vulnerabilities found in Web Applications. LAPSE was developed by Benjamin Livshits as part of the Griffin Software Security Project. The project's second push is being led by Pablo Martín Pérez, Evalues Lab ICT Security Researcher, developing LAPSE+, an enhanced version of LAPSE.

Release description: LAPSE+ is a security scanner for detecting vulnerabilities of untrusted data injection in Java EE Applications. It has been developed as a plugin for Eclipse Java Development Environment, working specifically with Eclipse Helios and Java 1.6 or higher. LAPSE+ is based on the GPL software LAPSE, developed by the SUIF Compiler Group of Stanford University. This new release of the plugin developed by Evalues Lab of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid provides more features to analyze the propagation of the malicious data through the application and includes the identification of new vulnerabilities.

Mantra is a security framework which can be very helpful in performing all the five phases of attacks including reconnaissance, scanning and enumeration, gaining access, escalation of privileges,maintaining access, and covering tracks. Apart from that it also contains a set of tools targeted for web developers and code debuggers which makes it handy for both offensive security and defensive security related tasks.

Our primary focus is at the application layer. While we take into consideration the underlying mobile platform and carrier inherent risks when threat modeling and building controls, we are targeting the areas that the average developer can make a difference. Additionally, we focus not only on the mobile applications deployed to end user devices, but also on the broader server-side infrastructure which the mobile apps communicate with. We focus heavily on the integration between the mobile application, remote authentication services, and cloud platform-specific features.

ModSecurity is an Apache web server module that provides a web application firewall engine. The ModSecurity Rules Language engine is extrememly flexible and robust and has been referred to as the "Swiss Army Knife of web application firewalls." While this is certainly true, it doesn't do much implicitly on its own and requires rules to tell it what to do. In order to enable users to take full advantage of ModSecurity out of the box, we have developed the Core Rule Set (CRS) which provides critical protections against attacks across most every web architecture.

Unlike intrusion detection and prevention systems, which rely on signatures specific to known vulnerabilities, the CRS is based on generic rules which focus on attack payload identification in order to provide protection from zero day and unknown vulnerabilities often found in web applications, which are in most cases custom coded.

Similar to http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mythbusters but for appsec, urban legends and assumptions regarding appsec will be tested and there'll be a set of examples that will prove the correctness/incorrectness of a statement related to the question. Every question will be answered in the mailing list and further, a page on the OWASP site will be created to report the results. Also anyone will be able to use the contents of the page/ml in OWASP conferences to spread the verb about what's an urban legend and what's not”.

Its goal is to help people securing their web applications against attacks like SQL Injections, Cross Site Scripting, Cross Site Request Forgery, Local & Remote file inclusions.

The difference with most WAF (Web Application Firewalls) out there is that it does not rely upon signatures to detect and block attacks. It uses a simpler model where, instead of trying to detect "known" attacks, it detects unexpected characters in the HTTP requests/arguments.

Each kind of unusual character will increase the score of the request. If the request reaches a score considered "too high", the request will be denied, and the user will be redirected to a "forbidden" page. Yes, it works somewhat like a spam system.

*The OWASP Open Review Project (ORPRO) is a project to openly check open source libraries and software that are vital to most commercial and non-commercial apps around.

We are surrounded by open source software. Not only the open source software all of us use, also many of the commercial applications contain open source libraries. Think of server and desktop software, but don't forget routers, cars, phones. Open source is everywhere.

The OWASP Open Review Project (ORPRO) exists to act as a resource providing automated static analysis of OWASP projects.

Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL®) is an international, information security, community standard to promote open and publicly available security content, and to standardize the transfer of this information across the entire spectrum of security tools and services.

This project will strive to create OVAL content (which are simply XML files) for common security mis-configurations. For example, refer to http://www.codeproject.com/KB/web-security/web-based-applications.aspx for list of top 10 Application Security Vulnerabilities in Web.config Files which may impact any ASP.NET web application. Each of these security settings can be tested easily by writing corresponding OVAL checks. In this particular case, xmlfilecontent_item can be used.

There are already free tools (OVAL Interpreters) available which can be readily used to check content conforming to OVAL standard.

OVAL community is quite active and there is fast amount of content available in OVAL repository maintained at MITRE website.

By providing standard OWASP reviewed OVAL content to general public, this project goal is to make it easier for anyone involved in finding configuration related vulnerabilities in any web application platform

Store passwords in encrypted files with an easy to use command line interface, and utilities to use the passwords in code. In its simplest form, the keys are generated per environment with OS access controls while the password files are stored in SCM.

This document provides a quick high level reference for secure coding practices. It is technology agnostic and defines a set of general software security coding practices, in a checklist format, that can be integrated into the development lifecycle. Implementation of these practices will mitigate most common software vulnerabilities.

The majority of the world's authentication systems rely on a single-factor authentication mechanism: the password. A simple internet search yields thousands of pages dedicated to the topic of creating a secure password, but almost all of them are inherently flawed in that they recommend using either joining pieces of known information to compile a secure password or variations of character conversion schemes on commonly known words and phrases. The inherent problem with this approach is that if the pieces are known, then it is fairly trivial to compute the variations that compile the whole password.

This project will have a two pronged approach designed to put more nails in the single-factor method of authentication.

First, we will create an interactive portal where penetration testers are able to enter known information about the target. This known information can then be broken down and converted to create a large downloadable dictionary list that has been customized to the target. This list will be added to a comprehensive standard dictionary with the character conversions performed on that as well. The result would be a large list of commonly used passwords, dictionary words, target specific passwords, and various derivitives of each which should cover the vast majority of passwords used today.

The second prong of our approach will be to capture the results of all data collected into a large database. This data will be hashed with common hashing methods to create what will become the world's largest rainbow tables. A user can provide us with a hash and we can do a lookup against these tables to search for matching entries. The goal here is to put a stop to unsalted password hashes for authentication.

This project aims to create a different type of competition that encourages secure coding rather than hacking skills.

We've all heard of capture the flag competitions, Secure The Flag (STF) is different. STF is a developer focused competition where teams compete to develop the most secure application based on a series of software requirements. Some requirements are just there to set boundaries and standardize the game, some requirements are critical elements and MUST be implemented, other elements are optional and can get you bonus points, but be careful, bonus features are more risky! Teams will receive the requirements, along with a pre-configured VM (LAMP) several days before the competition to allow ample time to design and implement their systems.

The Secure Web Application Framework Manifesto is a document detailing a specific set of security requirements for developers of web application frameworks to adhere to. The goal is to help develop more secure applications from the start. The manifesto centers around the following beliefs:

Frameworks that are ‘secure by default’ will yield a dramatic reduction in the number of common web application security vulnerabilities.

Application security experts should provide, on a regularly basis, updated guidance to framework developers on how to incorporate mechanisms to avoid newly discovered vulnerabilities.

This projects aims to benchmark the security of various enterprise security products/services against OWASP Top 10 risks. Comprehensive assessing security of enterprise products/services, the OWASP Security Baseline initiative will (eventually) lead to vendor-independent security certified solutions.

Nobody (and no company) can build secure software by themselves. We have seen that vulnerability research can help to drive security forward in companies, but it’s a painful process. We envision a partnership between technology platform vendors and a thriving ecosystem focused on the security of their technology. The ecosystem will include researchers (both builders and breakers), tools, libraries, guidelines, awareness materials, standards, education, conferences, forums, feeds, announcements, and probably more.

Develop a reference implementation of open source tools integrated in an end to end development process. This will likely include a reference architecture, guidance and a reference implementation using open source tools. We will likely extend current open source tools or develop new tools where gaps exist.

SIMBA (Security Integration Module for Business Applications) is a User Access Management system that can be integrated with any business application. The purpose of the project is to secure an application fast and easy. Because SIMBA itself is generic it can be customized for every project. Many features are customizable e.g. designing your own authentication chain is easy and fast by using existing or newly created building blocks. A separate Flex manager application is available to manage the data, view the audit logs and configure parameters.

With the support of the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) community SIMBA is constantly improved so current security vulnerabilities are better supported and proactive work is done against future vulnerabilities.
SIMBA is not vendor specific, developed in an international community and is supported by all major platforms.

To outlines mandatory and recommended processes and practices to manage risks associated with applications. Software Security is equally dependent on people, processes and technology. The effectiveness of the OWASP Software Security Process is continuously measured and is improved through feedback, threat landscape changes, availability of new concepts and tools. Should be the framework to map Requirements, Dev and Testing guidelines for example.

*The OWASP Testing Guide includes a "best practice" penetration testing framework which users can implement in their own organizations and a "low level" penetration testing guide that describes techniques for testing most common web application and web service security issues.

This project will complement the OWASP Testing Guide as well as the OWASP RFP Template. This is going to be a reporting template for vulnerability findings which will be free, base on industry best practices and hopefully will become the defacto standard.

The purpose of this project is to mitigate web applications threats using Varnish. Varnish (https://www.varnish-cache.org/) is a modern, very flexible and scalable reverse-proxy system which supports VCL, a wonderful domain-specific language to deal with HTTP (to handle headers, routing, rewrite and block requests, etc). Nowadays, many big Internet services are behind Varnish and we can bring some security policies to it.

In another words: Varnish as a Web Application Firewall; A kind of mod_security for Varnish; Varnish security filters.

The OWASP Web Application Firewall (WAF) Project is a ModSecurity endorsed Port of their Language Specification (Level 1) for Java and .NET based on the contribution to ESAPI-Java by Arshan Dabirsiaghi.

The practice points out to the fact that a seemingly secure web application does, in reality, protect interests of only a specific group of users. Interests of a great number of users are protected only partially or by no means. This project will focus extensively on the issue of web application security accessibility.

WBTS was built to quickly automate and test various browser and user-agents for security issues. It contains all the necessary services required for testing a browser. The following services are included: DNS, HTTP(S), Logging Services and support for VirtualHosts.

*WebScarab NG is a robust tool that assists the user in penetration test. This is a complete rewrite of the old WebScarab application, with a special focus on making the application more user-friendly.

WebScarab is a framework for analysing applications that communicate using the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It is written in Java, and is thus portable to many platforms. WebScarab has several modes of operation, implemented by a number of plugins. In its most common usage, WebScarab operates as an intercepting proxy, allowing the operator to review and modify requests created by the browser before they are sent to the server, and to review and modify responses returned from the server before they are received by the browser. WebScarab is able to intercept both HTTP and HTTPS communication. The operator can also review the conversations (requests and responses) that have passed through WebScarab.

x5s is a Fiddleraddon which aims to assist penetration testers in finding cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. This is not a point and shoot tool, it requires some understanding of how encoding issues lead to XSS, and it requires manual driving.

It's main goal is to help you identify the hotspots where XSS might occur by:

Detecting where safe encodings were not applied to emitted user-inputs